This past weekend I had the privilege of attending Ortus Solution's Coldbox 101 training class in Grapevine, Texas. It is true that I did pay for the opportunity, but the price was obscured and more than justified by the quantity, quality, and cohesiveness of the knowledge that was shared. Coldbox's master architect himself, Luis Majano, was the instructor, and it was with the same level of zeal and attention to detail that he puts into his framework that he also enlightened and empowered his students on Coldbox. In this case, the "no student left behind" policy was absolutely successful. With a student body composed of everyone from absolute CF beginner to CF expert, and from designer to "design-blind", Luis ensured that the content was both palatable and applicable to one and all.

I came to the class being what I would best describe as semi-proficient in Coldbox. I've written a large Coldbox app, done a few Coldbox presentations, blogged about some aspects of Coldbox, and was even hired recently to present a full day instructional course on Coldbox to a local group of San Antonio developers. But, as with any subject that one teaches themselves, there are always gaps in the knowledge you glean from reading docs and your own experiences. It was these gaps I came to the training hoping to fill, and fill them I did. I was given solid insight into how the framework itself is architected, allowing me to fully visualize the request lifecycle and the framework components that interact with and manipulate it; I honed my knowledge of ALL of Coldbox's core concepts, such as interceptors, views,layouts, viewlets, and plugins; I gained insight into the workflow and approaches that Luis himself uses on a daily basis; and my mind was opened up to a whole new facet of the development lifecycle that I personally have always avoided: unit testing.

Coldbox is SO keen on the idea of unit/integration testing that it has the built in ability to simulate itself! In a nutshell, Coldbox makes it VERY simple and easy to test entire events (the equivalent of fuseactions, if that's a more relevant term for you) without the need for the developer to write any additional code. It was truly beautiful to see integration and unit tests run, and just as easy to write them.

I also had an opportunity to flip through the pre-copy of the official Coldbox book, and I must say I had a hard time handing it off to the next student. The Table of Contents was lengthy and robust, and the associated content was clear, concise, and easy to read. Oh, and it is in color! The plethora of code snippets really jump out at you, and  highlighted items are truly highlighted. I would say that the book is definitely one that you will want to have on your desk as a reference. If I understood correctly, we should be seeing it released into the wild in short order. :)

The excitement that new knowledge brings is great to those of us who love it and derive our livelihood from it, and I could easily spend a day sharing all of the very useful information and understandings I received from attending this class. I wasn't asked not to, nor was I asked to sign any NDAs; but for the sake of honoring the information that Luis earns some of his sustenance from, I'll refrain from divulging any more details of the class. I will, however, leave you with this thought...

If you are doing Coldbox development and you have not attended Luis' Coldbox 101 training class, I guarantee you that what you are writing is not all that it could be. It won't be architected as well as it could be, it won't be leveraging all of the shortcuts and features that it could be, and it won't be top of the line. That isn't to say that you aren't capable of writing a good Coldbox app, but without the in-depth understandings that this class offers, your app will very likely not be a great Coldbox app.

It's challenging to get department heads to budget in training sometimes, but my fellow developers, if your shop is or is considering being a Coldbox shop, then it is worth the effort to justify this training to them. I typically ask myself the question, "if it was my  money, would I spend it on this?", and regarding this class the answer is an unequivocable YES! If you would like any additional input to help justify the training, I and I'm sure anybody else who attended this training class would be more than happy to provide our own personal feedback and testimonial.

If you are serious about writing solid, load-bearing apps in Coldbox, do this for yourself: attend Coldbox 101 training.

Doug out.